Author: John Swan (Firedark123)

While enjoying monster of the week, there is some areas that should be addressed.

1. The advanced moves prove useless to a game where a majority of the time the game is:

A. One shot scenario.

B. The hunters already have an extensive backstory and history.

What I would suggest is enabling advanced moves for one shot games, especially the advanced kick some ass move, as that is the only way outside of luck to go toe to toe with a monster boss without taking near deadly harm.

2. The failed roll XP reward system is something I do not like. The PC’s should get experience from progressing the mystery and acting their character, hence the highlighted stats in the previous edition was a better mechanic. If the PC’s do well in an investigation through a string of successes, their advancement slows to a crawl. Also failure means the mystery drags on as hard moves and failed rolls means you miss out on valuable information that may progress the plot. How is being shitty on your rolls worthy of an XP reward?

So what do you say about my beefs?

Now here is a question concerning monsters. While the main monster of a game can easily be built by using the normal monster generation rules, what if you’re dealing with a situation with a master monster and a bunch of lesser monsters working under him/her/it. For instance say for instance say you have an ancient vampire who turns a number of girls around town into his “Vampire Brides”. The brides should likely be weaker than the Master Vampire but probably more dangerous than a Minion. This also could apply to other cases where a Demon might have a cult of dark priests who get supernatural gifts or a Voodoo priest raising a horde of zombies.

The way I’ed do it is basically grab an appropriate hunter template (such as the Monstrous), pick some appropriate generic moves (but working them like Monster Powers) and there you go instant tough monster minion. As for harm, should the lesser monsters have as much harm as the PC’s have (Aka 7 harm capacity), or should they be one-hit kills?

How do “Turns” actually work in Monster of the Week? Can a monster only attack PC’s as a reaction to their actions or do they get an action phase of their own, much like in Dungeon World. For instance in Dungeon World when monsters attack they can force a PC to make a Defy Danger roll. There does not seem to be something like this in the Monster of the Week. An Act Under Pressure roll might work in a similar way but I hesitate to gimp players with low cool.

The way I have been doing it is that each monster and minion has a phase in combat after all the PC’s have acted (Unless the monster/minions succeed in a surprise attack, where the Monster Phase would happen before the PC’s react). A minion or monster can either perform an attack action or use a more powerful Monster Move if available. Some monster moves I consider “Reactive” which occur on each character’s phase (Like a monster having some kind of Regeneration ability or use something that can be done quickly and reflexively). The more powerful moves require monsters to perform their monster moves on their turn. Otherwise if the Monster/Minion chose an attack action, they declare their method of attack and the affected players make either a Cool, Tough or Smart roll to resist. They need to describe how they are using that stat. Cool would involve dodging or evading. Tough would involve blocking or taking it like a boss (I allow Weird to be supplemented if the character has the Superhuman strength or something similar). Smart would be using some intelligent move to outwit the monster (such as using the surrounding area as cover). On a 10+ they take no harm, on a 7-9 they take the monster’s harm -1 or a lesser effect. on a 6+ they take the full harm or an appropriate Hard Move of the monster’s type.

So how do you handle the actions monsters take during combat?

I got a question considering “Monster Moves”. Can you use Monster Moves to apply penalties to character rolls or require additional rolls before they can perform a specific action.

For instance, I have an antagonist that has a monster move that allows them at will to teleport short distances by stepping through shadows. While there is a way the hunters can nullify this ability (by using a powerful light source to block out any deep shadows in the area), if they don’t use this the monster can teleport around making it difficult to strike in combat and allowing it to strike the Hunters at will.

One option I would consider is requiring an “Act Under Pressure” roll to even attack the monster. On a full success they can use a “Kick some ass” move as normal. On a partial the monster is evasive imposing a -1 penalty on any move used against the monster that phase. On a failure the hunter automatically misses and takes harm from the monster as they miss their mark and then get stabbed from the darkness.

What would be your suggestions for this kind of power?

I’m running a one shot of Monster of the Week tonight in about an hour. I could use more people to sign up. The event is on the Hangout RPG’s. Feel free to join as I need more players!

Hello folks. I’m a great fan of Monster of the Week and wish I could find more fans of the game. I find Monster of the Week caters more to my style of play and while Monsterhearts has some interesting concepts, I find MOTW to be a superior game in many respects. I have only run the game twice thus far, once over OpenRPG and once at a gaming convention. I had good fun with the game and hope to have a chance to play it in the future. Good to see a fan base building up for this great game.